Posted on 07/16/2009 12:44:03 PM PDT by steve-b
How far has Ben Stein sunk? Far enough that I feel compelled to resuscitate the Ben Stein Watch, just to share this unfunny and positively harmful TV ad which is now being aired:
"I went to freescore.com and found out my score for free", says Ben, while an annoying squirrel holds up a sign with the word "FREE" in some horrible brush-script font.
A few points are worth noting here. First, the score itself is not very useful to consumers. What's useful is the report — if there's an error on the report, then the consumer can try to rectify it. Secondly, and much more importantly, if you want a free credit report, there's only one place to go: annualcreditreport.com. That's the place where the big three credit-rating agencies will give you a genuinely free copy of your credit report once a year, as required by federal law.
You won't be surprised to hear that freescore.com is not free: in order to get any information out of them at all, you have to authorize them to charge you a $29.95 monthly fee. They even extract a dollar out of you up front, just to make sure that money is there.
Stein, here, has become a predatory bait-and-switch merchant, dangling a "free" credit report in front of people so that he can sock them with a massive monthly fee for, essentially, doing nothing at all. Naturally, the people who take him up on this offer will be those who can least afford it....
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.reuters.com ...
Did he support Al Franken?
Yes
OMG...Ben Stein was in a commercial! And he probably got paid for it! And the commercial didn’t tell the exact truth!
Caveat emptor
FYI
He didn’t have far to fall. I used to subscribe to the American Spectator in the 90’s but stopped reading it when I realized that Ben Stein’s Diary (a monthly feature) was basically made up.
Sure did. $4000 in the last two years.
Cronyism over principle. (I'm not saying I don't have lefty friends, some of whom conceivably might run for elective office. But I hope they would understand that I cannot in good conscience DONATE to them.)
It was??
This is what p*sses me off about business and why I am more of a progressive on economic issues. Businesses are darn near as big a bunch of crooks as government. Ben Stein ought to be ashamed. Freecreditreport.com should be ashamed. The french dude they have lipsyncing the stupid commercials should be ashamed. The stations that air this crap ought to be ashamed. The FTC should have stopped this years ago, but they are too lazy. The whole damn bunch of them ought to sued and have to refund every $29.95 per MONTH fee they have gotten and pay punitive damages.
parsy, who gets furious as rip off crap like this
"Progressive" eh? Call it what you like, I guess.
Ben has been hanging around Hollywierd too much.
You got some splaining to do.....do so, please.
I believe he did in the many words that follow the portion that you posted.
No, I ain’t a darn liberal. I just think business interests get way too much of a pass by conservatives, and particularly the GOP. For example, Arkansas is a very conservative state. I do not think you will find many pictures of Teddy Kennedy hanging on our walls. Elvis, John Wayne, and Rebel Flags, yes! But you ask your typical Arkansas why he’s a Democrat and not a Republican, and the answer is usually, “Republicans are the party of the rich” or “Republicans don’t give a damn about the working man.”
I used to think these people were simply misguided, being a proud Republican, but as I have gotten older, I had to admit to myself that they were right. My uncle, the Democrat, still teases me about being stupid for so many years. It hurts, but I deserve it.
So, no, I ain’t a liberal. I prefer to see myself in the Teddy Roosevelt Bull Moose mode.
parsy, who toes the conservative line except on economics.
I’ll ‘splain, but promise me you won’t start calling me names, like a stupid, libtard troll. I am a human being and I have feelings.
parsy, the sensitive
Translation: "I still think it's 1930."
I used to think these people were simply misguided, being a proud Republican, but as I have gotten older, I had to admit to myself that they were right.
I guess that's why Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and George Soros give so much money to the Republicans.
My uncle, the Democrat, still teases me about being stupid for so many years. It hurts, but I deserve it.
Well, you do now, I guess.
So, no, I ain’t a liberal. I prefer to see myself in the Teddy Roosevelt Bull Moose mode.
So you're a populist...I'm guessing a Huckabee supporter?
parsy, who toes the conservative line except on economics.
...sigh...
The old line Garry Trudeau wrote for Uncle Duke comes to mind: “Honey, all labor leaders are sensitive to the plight of the working class. That’s how they avoid belonging to it.”
Actually, I do like Huckabee the more I see of him. But I left the “stupid” party back when Bush signed off on the Bankrupcty Reform bill.
Looking back on those days, and I put up a post of FR when I became a Democrat, I was right abiout a lot of things I said. One of my reasons was that I thought the GOP wanted responsibility from the poor clods who got credit card loans at 22.9% but didn’t expect responsibility from the lenders who knew (from credit bureau information) how many cards a debtor had, what credit was out there, and the liklihood of repayment.
IMHO, the lender is often just as responsible as the the lendee. Of course I was bombarded with “They took the loan, they ought to pay it back” and “If they were so stupid to borrow more than they could afford, then to heck with them” sort of responses.
Looking back, after our recent little bo-bo’s in the stock market, and with the sub-prime mess, I think I was right. And gee whiz, look how many people now are blaming the lenders for making poor loans.
So maybe I ain’t stupid. Maybe I am farsighted. Maybe if the GOP had listened to me, and regulated some of these financial institutions more, and hadn’t been so gung ho big business, we might not have quite so big a mess to have pay overt the next few generations.
I can’t blame the GOP for not listening to me because all I am is some little anonymous freeper out here fighting the good fight. But it looks to me like somebody in the GOP ought to have had enough brains to see this coming like I did.
parsy, the bull moose?
Sad to see celebs cash in and sell a service that they wouldn't otherwise recommend we use. Ben Stein has written about other financial rip-offs.
And what do you propose to do about it, aside from letting them twist in the wind when the borrower can't pay it back (my proposed "action")?
Of course I was bombarded with “They took the loan, they ought to pay it back” and “If they were so stupid to borrow more than they could afford, then to heck with them” sort of responses.
Probably because those things are, you know, true.
Looking back, after our recent little bo-bo’s in the stock market, and with the sub-prime mess, I think I was right. And gee whiz, look how many people now are blaming the lenders for making poor loans.
Yes, of course, some lenders made stupid decisions (although many of them were made under government pressure to lend more money to "disadvantaged groups"). But so what? What do you do about it? Again, my answer is to let those companies fail if that's where the market and their decisions take them. What's yours? Have the government take it all over?
So maybe I ain’t stupid. Maybe I am farsighted. Maybe if the GOP had listened to me, and regulated some of these financial institutions more, and hadn’t been so gung ho big business, we might not have quite so big a mess to have pay overt the next few generations.
Or maybe you're stupid. At least in this area. No offense - I ask myself the same question, about myself, all the time. But more government wouldn't solve the problem - more government would exacerbate the problem, like it almost always does. Maybe the solution is to end this "bailout" garbage and allow real consequences for irresponsible, stupid decisions. But like the rest of the "progressive" world, you think that the government telling people to do something just makes it happen, without any unintended consequences, because you think the world is simpler than it is.
I can’t blame the GOP for not listening to me because all I am is some little anonymous freeper out here fighting the good fight.
I think the GOP has listened to you and people like you far too much - after all, some of them went along with the massive government expansion of the past year.
But it looks to me like somebody in the GOP ought to have had enough brains to see this coming like I did.
That much is true, especially since the government largely *caused* the current mess. But I suppose you wouldn't see it that way, since the idea of a command economy seems to appeal to you.
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